If the Sky Can Crack
by Erik's Champion
Summary: YGOxHP. After years of travel and uncertainty, Seto and Mokuba know they only have each other. So what can they do when, thrust into unfamiliar territory and put at the mercy of the future Lord Voldemort, the world seems so determined to tear them apart?
1. To Wash Away Our Bad Luck

Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I have much to disclaim. I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh, _Harry Potter_, Death Note, or the song "Electrical Storm" by U2. Those were all created by people who are much more talented than me.

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Too old—that was a common one. They wanted someone that they could mold and mutate, really raise as _their own_. They wanted to hold onto the illusion that he was not really someone else's child, with his own history, independent of their existence. As soon as he was old enough to think on his own, to not go blindly running into the arms of some stranger and fling his unconditional love at them without a second thought, he was suddenly no longer wanted by anyone. He could not say where the line had been, but he had crossed it, and was now too tall, smart, opinionated, to have any value.

All the other excuses sprung from that one. And he had heard many, countless, excuses stumbling out of awkward mouths as his once potential emancipators tried to concoct a reasonable pretext for their cruel and thoughtless abandonment. He couldn't pretend that it didn't hurt, either. He listened to their empty explanations, sucked in their words as best he could, tried to be better. He tried to turn the words of rejection into some sort of comfort, advice for the next time, a way to better himself. Then maybe, just maybe, he would be saved. However, as the months had turned to years, he could not help but wonder when this mythical and long sought-after _next time_ would become _this time, _when he finally would be deemed worthy.

Seto turned back to his fingers. One down, but how many to go? Too defiant. Well, that came with age and the situation; it didn't count. Certainly he was too defiant, he saw the reflection of his defiance in the widening of stranger's eyes when he refused to heed their commands. After all, what difference did it make if he and Mokuba didn't eat with the rest of the children in their stuffy and dirty dining halls, would the world really stop spinning if they took their meals together, away from prying eyes? Apparently, to some it would. Nevertheless, defiance was tied to age, and just as how he could not change the passing of time, his blossoming rebelliousness was too unalterable. He refused to accept it as a separate justification, and returned the finger that had represented it back to his fist.

He bit his lower lip in concentration. There had to be more. Age played a large part in it, to be sure, but there had to be something independent, something that he could _change_. Seto did not consider himself immodest, only realistic, and he knew that if he could pinpoint the source of the problem, then he could correct it. However, he had a feeling that the answer to his conundrum did not lie in his hands, the problem lay solely in the minds of those strangers. They examined him for perhaps five minutes, ten if he was lucky, and from that brief encounter expected to know every facet of his personality, all his traits and subtleties. They thought that they could see his past and future extending around him as clearly as they could see his present, and that was their primary error. Children were not as simple as all that.

"I guess that's why they like the little ones. They have no past, only the future. And they can_ control_ their future, if they want to…"

He had not meant to say the worlds aloud, it was a habit that he had grown accustomed to when it was just him and Mokuba; and when the two of them were together, he had the tendency to ignore the presence of everyone else. Unfortunately, not only were they not alone, but the one that his words were intended to reach was dozing peacefully on his shoulder, his head gradually working to cut off the flow of blood to Seto's arm.

Their chaperone only eyed him skeptically over her overwhelming layers of stark, black clothing that smelled strongly of old silk and the inside of armoires. She was most likely looking over all her past misdeeds, wondering what it was that warranted her spending several hours shepherding these two basket cases across the countryside in the pouring rain. At least, that was what Seto hopped she was thinking. And if anyone deserved a potent dose of melancholy reflection at this time, it was her, the cruel fiend. How she had attained such a strong hold over Seto and Mokuba he could never fathom; after all, she had no_ real_ authority. She was merely a retired old witch who had once been the director of the orphanage that the two brothers had previously called 'home.' She had not officially held her post for at least twenty years, but did not let that fact deter her from ruling the lives of those unfortunate enough to fall under her supposed jurisdiction, prodding around and generally mucking things up.

Seto and Mokuba had been misfortunate enough. Possibly for his age, or his defiance, she had taken an instant and venomous dislike to both of them, and, once making her judgment, had refused to alter her opinion even an inch. From her lofty perch, she had governed them with an icy heart and iron first, both equally destructive and unswayable. Always his life was in the possession of such undeserving people.

How long Seto and Mokuba had resided at the Wammy House orphanage, he could not say. It could have been days, mouths, years. Since they had been unceremoniously cast out of their childhood (it had been unintentional on the part of their parents, yes, but that hardly made a difference), time had taken on a new, and increasingly vague meaning. He had first lost track of the days of the week, they all seemed to blend into one when there were no distinguishing features to mark one as different from any other. Next had been the months—despite a few minor weather changes, those were all more or less identical as well. Now he hovered somewhere along the edge of no longer being able to distinguish between years and seasons. Years were difficult because they were so long, once you forgot, you were lost for a good long while. Seasons should have been easy to remember—all he had to do was look out the window—but with the near constant re-relocations, it was difficult to remember where exactly destiny had placed him. And, seeing as how the seasons are dependent on the location of the observer, time had slowly faded away to nothing at all.

Location mattered less. They were all the same, these dreary buildings with the unyielding walls inhabited by equally unyielding people. The physical properties of life had become essentially a mass of unrecognizable blurs to Seto. After all this, very few things pierced his swirling haze of consciousness. One was Mokuba, his only connection to the bright days of youthful pride when he had thought that destiny had only grand things in store for them. The days when the two of them had run wild in the dense forest of their backyard, imagining that they were conquering immense monsters that threatened to lock them up, separate the two of them forever, and trap them in darkness so fantastical and horrific that only a child can conceive of it. Little had they known that the real monsters walked the earth in flesh and blood, and were more horrendous than anything they could have dreamed up.

Slowly drawing himself back into reality, and careful not to disrupt the head resting on his shoulder, Seto shifted to gaze out of the window. This place looked quite unfamiliar to him. It was impossible to say for certain, but this didn't _feel_ like Japan. The expanses of land were so immense and unconquerable—so open and airy—it was quite unlike the boxy buildings that jockeyed for breathing room as they scraped the sunlight down to the head of a needle. Here, everything looked huge and surreal, as if this world was the product of a stranger's dreams more than the laws of nature. He watched this strange world race by quickly and wondered vaguely what it was running from.

Motivated more by a desire to fill the sinking void of silence than out of any sincere curiosity, Seto whispered, "Excuse me, but…where are we?" Those old, weary eyes carelessly rose out of their sunken, watery pools and meandered over in his direction. Seto thought that he could detect a hint of surprise in her features, maybe she had forgotten that they were there.

"England." The word was uttered without ceremony. That woman had no awareness that with those few syllables, she had taken them away from their homeland, halfway across the world and away from any and everything familiar. Seto had known that he was far from home, he had seen it in the huge gray sky and lush wet foliage, but it had not been real until there was verbal confirmation. Hearing the words made it real, but that did not make it more meaningful. England was just a word, a collection of letters that had no independent meaning; they just so happened to correspond to a place that was very, very, far from Japan.

He nodded, gently resting his forehead against the cool glass of the window as he absentmindedly ran his free hand through his hair. Wrinkling his brow, he couldn't help but wonder aloud, "Why are we so far away? Didn't they have anywhere else to take us?" The woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and that was answer enough. No. He focused on the passing scenery for a moment longer then turned to her with freshly rising agitation that he was doing his best to suppress. "So where are we going?" He dared her with his tone to evade his questions again.

"Somewhere very lovely…" her response was more mumbles than words, sounding as if they were desperate to conceal themselves behind a few sizable pieces of furniture.

'Too lovely to have a name of course,' he wondered (this time careful to keep his thoughts internal), 'yes, that sounds _splendid_…' He was about to turn on this poor excuse for a chaperone with more questions, but a stirring at his side overtook his attention. He let his gaze flicker down to Mokuba, still fast asleep and blissfully unaware of what strange twist of fate had befallen them. While Mokuba's body was becoming with every moment closer to their new life, his mind remained in suspended animation, running through the scenery of dreams that Seto had so long ago left behind. Seto caressed the innocuous face with his gaze, allowing his eyes to follow the gently curving lines of the tightly pursed lips, furrowed brow, and damp forehead.

He watched as Mokuba's mouth formed unvoiced words. For some reason, despite the fact that he could not hear them, that they existed to no one expect Mokuba, those words seemed more real to him than those he exchanged with the creature sitting opposite him. He watched as his brother's eyes raced beneath their eyelids as if running, darting from one corner of the world to the next. They never rested, even while he slept. Delicately sweeping his free arm across his chest, he stroked the silky cushion of hair that seemed to grow increasingly wild with each move that the pair made. He gently ran his fingertips through the stray hairs, wishing that he could just as easily and elegantly build a fortress to seal them off from everything that was trying to tear at the seams of their lives.

So often he just wanted to sweep him away, to grow wings so that he could use them as a shield against the wind and rain. But he had no wings, no magic. Seto only had arms, one of which Mokuba was using as a pillow.

Maybe it was hours that passed, or it could have all been a few minutes. All that Seto was aware of was that his conscious became as clouded as the sky; his mind seemed to be floating several inches above his head and incapable of making direct contact. He vaguely felt the lurching of the car as it navigated the steep sea-side highway, always seeming to hover on the brink of toppling over the cliffs and into the ocean below. Thick layers of fog obscured his vision, making him just as incapable of seeing a hand in front of his face as the distant countryside. The sky slowly melted into the ground, forming of a new breed of shadowy creatures that leered on the distant hillsides. Everything seemed both close and far away, and always seemed to follow them, waiting for the moment when they looked away to finally spring their attack. However, he was always acutely aware of the rain. Pounding was not the right word, the rain was screaming, rushing closer towards him with every moment, chasing him down the road and howling his name. The afternoon melted into the evening, a worthless smudge of sights and smells, but that sound remained.

When the car finally pulled up to their new destination, he was afraid to touch it. He could see thousands of tiny daggers gleaming in the plunging drops, waiting to slice him with their needlelike incisors. He shied away from the thought, if only for a moment. Nevertheless, he had to practice caution. Pulling his collar up around his neck, he gently placed his cool palm on Mokuba's forehead, summoning him back into the waking world.

"C'mon," he mumbled, gesturing to the torrents of rain with a twitch of his head, "we gotta run." Their guide had already abandoned them, making her way inside with the only umbrella. With only her solid black silhouette distinguishable from the blurry gray sky and equally gray ground, Seto thought she most closely resembled some sort of demon of the underworld, a comparison that pleased him very much.

Seeing that Mokuba was still battling fatigue, Seto carefully grasped his neatly curled hand. Bracing himself for certain annihilation at the hands of his aqueous foes, Seto drew Mokuba closer and, with as much gusto as he could muster, fiercely kicked the door open before embarking on a mad dash for the entrance.

Immediately they were surrounded, the bullet-like drops of rain colliding with the few patches of skin that they had left uncovered, and desperately penetrating their insubstantial layers of clothing to get where they had. Seto bowed his head in an attempt to spare his eyes from the ruthless assault, but all the while was wary to not let Mokuba out of his sight. The boy's legs were so short, his feet still clumsy enough to stumble over loose pebbles and thick clumps of grass.

Trying to force his voice to remain calm while at the same time retaining the urgency of the situation, Seto called to his struggling younger brother, "You have to hurry! C'mon, don't fall!" Falling would be the worst possible outcome. A shiver stole between Seto's shoulder blades as he could see the two of them sprawled gracelessly amid the ruble, lying helplessly as the rain feasted on its defenseless prey. No matter what, he could not let that happen. Quickening their pace to the point that their feet made more contact with the surrounding air than the ground, they heaved forward, running desperately into their future, if only because their present was tottering on the brink of falling apart.

He tried to make noise to block out the incessant roar. It was louder than rain was supposed to sound, and much more abrasive. It was cries of terror, screams engorged with misery, and worse than that, listening carefully, he could hear the stifled sighs of suppressed tears, the worst because it struck him as being the most familiar. He was afraid that the rain would reach him—not just surround and drench him—but somehow work its way through his skin. Something that powerful would crush him, wipe away his lines and corrode him. Seto didn't have to feel it to know that it would happen; if he let down his guard for as much as a moment, he knew that he would be erased as easily as powdery and fleeting little smudges of chalk on a chalkboard.

Somehow, amid the lightning-sharp torrents that seemed so close to engulfing them, there was a door. In her final act of kindness, their companion had failed to leave the door open for them, leaving Seto to pound desperately on its unyielding, wooden surface. He opened his mouth, and was vaguely aware of thinking the words, "Someone, come on and open the door!" But his voice was extinguished by the time it left his throat, torn to pieces by the wind and the rain and scattered like the leftover feathers of a flock of birds departing for flight.

Just as he was about to consider giving up, planning some sort of shameless retreat, the door swung open with a crisp creak that, despite doing battle with the throbbing of the rain, seemed to reach him much easier than any sound had in quite a while. That crack seemed to break through the sound like a reaper slicing through dry grass, and suddenly everything around them became almost unbearably clear. The rain reversed direction and returned to the chasm of sky above them, taking its roar with it. Slightly apologetically, Seto thought. Almost frightened by the now overpowering sound of his own voice, Seto asked, "So, I guess we should go in?"

Mokuba nodded with forced resolution, and one gentle, creaky step at a time, the two slowly scaled the threshold. The hallway was cramped and musty, but the sound of their breathing and the sigh of the floor as it met their feet echoed as if they were entering an impossibly large carven to which they could keep walking through forever and never find their way out. Seto gripped Mokuba's hand tighter, afraid that the darkness might swallow him up. He looked about for the person who had opened the door, but wasn't that surprised when he saw that the hallway was completely empty.

He told himself that he was only trembling from the cold—for it was indeed incredibly cold, his breath showed up as clearly as stars in a rural sky the moment it left his body—Seto gently guided Mokuba down the hall, all the while wishing that he could take each footstep back the instant that he made it. He imaged that they could simply turn their backs and run away back home, but he didn't know where home was.

Their watery footsteps morphed into taunting masks below them, baring their wicked, twisted grins like how a lion greets its prey. Seto didn't look down. The shadows that lurked in the ceiling looked like black holes, destructive and never-ending. He didn't look up, either. Looking behind only reminded him of where he was coming from and looking ahead reminded him of where he was going to be. Running out of options, Seto looked at Mokuba, wondering if he could feel his fright through the shaking of his hand and the thrashing of his pulse that felt like rockets were going off in his heart.

Despite the fact that Mokuba was right next to him and there was no other sound around for miles, Seto had to ask Mokuba to repeat himself when he whispered, "I've never been this afraid before." That was true. The two bothers were accustomed to hordes of unfamiliar faces, bustling crowds, action, bright colors, and artificially cheery signs that were supposed to teach them about colors and numbers. This hallway was one of those place's half-forgotten nightmares.

"Hey," he bent down to the ground and cupped Mokuba's chin in his hand, looking him earnestly in the eye, trying to loose himself in them. "We're going to be okay, alright?" Mokuba nodded firmly, hopelessly drawn to Seto's unshakeable eyes and steady tone. "Now, c'mon." He stood again, only to find that the hallway looked different than it had when he had descended. Where there had once been an immense black abyss, there was now a brightly-light, albeit not too welcoming, office. Seto looked about warily, he could have sworn that this was not how he had left it. Walls weren't supposed to move on their own, bending and scooting into whatever position pleased them.

Overcome by the shock, it took Seto a moment to register that they were no longer alone. Seated at an unnecessarily copious desk that looked like it had seen its fair share of adventures, was a small woman whose face made harsh angles who too looked like she had long ago seen more than she had thought possible, and was now waiting for everything to come some sort of semi-satisfactory ending. She was deeply engaged in conversation with their guide. Seto had to squint, though they stood only a few feet away, to see that they were exchanging his and Mokuba's identification cards. The voices lagged several seconds behind the moving of their lips, almost as if someone had pre-recorded their conversation but hit 'play' a few moments too late. While he couldn't clearly identify a light source, the room was lit with the same artificial glare of a badly directed play, and the shadows were so crisp and intense and the items casting them took on the look of clay figurines or the product of a surrealist comic book.

Spotting an empty chair at the far end of the room, Seto half led, half carried Mokuba to their temporary harbor and gently cradled him in his lap, delicately placing his chin on his brother's drenched hair. Through the exchange of names and birthdates, Seto felt Mokuba's grip tighten as he fiercely whispered, "Seto, I don't like this place!"

Seto looked down at the top of Mokuba's head and drew him in closer, ignoring the waterfalls cascading down their clothes and rippling into the floor. He bent his neck low so that their owners—past or present—couldn't hear, and murmured, "I know, Mokie." He sighed like a gambler who had just been dealt his worst possible hand and continued, "neither do I."

He tried to keep his hands steady as the footsteps approached him. He didn't want to meet those new, strange eyes that would rip through him like iron-tipped arrows, demanding from him things that he couldn't give and posing questions that he couldn't answer. He had had enough of those types of questions, so fierce and so solid that they tore through everything around him, replacing the wide open expanses he tried to keep around the two of them with cold, stony-faced exteriors. Twisting his face as far away as his neck would accommodate, he tried to ignore the face that was looming dangerously near to his line of vision. Seto kept his lips stiff and his mood indifferent as milky fog as the woman gently, though wearily cooed, "Seto? And Mokuba? Welcome, I think you'll be very happy here."

She wasn't there she wasn't there she wasn't there. It was an illusion, her voice just the murmur of the wind outside, her face an unfortunate pattern in the curtains that would disappear as soon as they resettled. There was no woman, there couldn't be. It had been just the two of them forever, Seto and Mokuba, an irrevocable alliance, an unbreakable bond that was immune to the unpredictable changes that wrought their havoc on everything else. The two of them had always stood fast together no matter how strong the storms of life had blown around them. They had been vagabonds, unattached to anyone or anything but each other, floating like two little birds on a massive, ferocious current. They had learned that they needed no physical location to call home because their home was with each other. They had learned to not be corroded, not to be estranged by anyone. And that included strange, middle-aged women who tried to force his eyes in her direction and intrude on their little battlement as if she thought she had a genuine right to be there.

Seto heard her sigh in resignation, producing a sound not unlike the thumping of dirt being beaten out of an old, musty carpet. She slowly backed away, but did not dissipate entirely. Instead, she hovered in the middle distance, not wanting to stay any closer than she had to but at the same time hesitant to leave them to their own devices, a habit of never letting anyone fully out of her sight, though at the same time remaining at a safe distance, that seemed to be imbued in her from several years of painful experience. Seto found himself despising her for her lack of commitment. She had agreed to receive them, hadn't she? If there was anyone who had the right to shy away and act timid in a corner, it was he and Mokuba. Deciding that if she wouldn't, he would make the first move—if it meant only that this painful meandering around the issue would be cut a bit shorter—Seto slowly lifted his head and looked her directly in the eye.

The moment their eyes met, it seemed that much more than the distance between their faces had been surpassed. The woman seemed to re-inflate, as if the vile of the antidote to a previously incurable poison had been handed to her at the last critical moment. Perhaps it was the hint of a smile that graced her lips as she re-assessed them, or perhaps it was just the effect of the tension being lifted from her features that suddenly made her seem more controlled, trusting, and, if it was even possible given the circumstances—pleasant.

She approached the pair with constrained tenderness, as if afraid to wake them from a short and shallow slumber and whispered, now as if she was afraid of waking some foul creature that was sleeping in the next room, "We're so glad to have you here. And you're lucky; you've arrived just in time for dinner. But, let's get you two dried off first." Seto nodded in silent acquiescence and gently lifted Mokuba off his lap who, unsurprisingly, was hesitant to allow his feet to make contact with the ground. He squirmed uncomfortably in Seto's arms as if about to be lowered into a festering pit of snakes that were waiting to devour him. He sought Seto out with wide, pleading eyes, as if begging his brother to spare him from the cruel fate of having to admit that he was, in fact, here. Even once his feet had hit the floor, they never truly made contact, always hovering just an instant above the worn, dusty surface and preventing him from touching it. His footsteps were awkward and strained, as if the effects of gravity no longer fully applied to him and he had to make a special effort to keep from floating away. Clenching Seto's hand, he clung to him like a lone rock in the middle of a turbulent ocean and followed him down the dark, narrow hallway.

Peering into the shadows surrounding them, it was nearly impossible to discern any individual shapes or textures. It was as if the world had been wiped clean and spun around, leaving nothing the way it had been before. This world was new, but it was foreboding, like a night sky without stars, it was an eternal expanse of indefinable, untouchable space. The spectral figure of Mrs. Cole as she shuffled across the floor, her heavy layers of clothes leaving behind weak whispers in the otherwise silent hall, was the only discernable object, and even that came unpredictably in and out of sight like the glimmer of a distant building darting in and out of a heavy fog.

Amid the darkness, a faint light began to glow in the distance. It was feeble and obscured by dust and distance, but the sight made Seto and Mokuba's hearts jolt with anticipation and freshly kindled hope, the kind that they knew not to hold too tightly lest they break it. At the first intimation of light, they wanted to envelop themselves in it, to breathe it in like a flighty summer breeze and somehow trap it inside. But the glow was intangible. It was heavily dissipated across the nearly solid layers of somber shadows and seemed not to come from a direct source, but something all around them that they couldn't rightly locate.

Like the dainty sparks that haunt the night sky before the rising of the sun, the darkness slowly peeled away like old sheets of wallpaper, revealing something mysterious and disfigured that Seto wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to see. But he couldn't stop the rising of the sun, he was set on a course and there was now no controlling where it would take him. The rays multiplied in their intensity, looming across the horizon, and the immense, fiery ball hurled itself up into the center of the sky, searing his eyes and forcing him to fiercely beat back a series of sharp and biting tears.

"I'll leave you two here for now," Mrs. Cole said, pushing open the door to the bathroom with a dry, painful creak. "You two must be freezing in those soaking things," she gestured towards their waterlogged clothing. "There's a radiator in there you can use to dry your coats off, and I'll go get you two dry things to wear."

She turned from them and continued back down the hallway the way they had come, her footsteps slowly crumbling into oblivion behind them. Seto and Mokuba crept into the doorway of what they could now see was the bathroom, illuminated with a dazzling array of blinding lights. Row upon row of them peered down at them from the ceiling, melted off the walls, gripped the countertops with fierce, shining claws that burned with a fiery metallic sheen. The lights effaced any intimation of shadow or dirt. Everything put on the front of being crisp and clean, but Seto could see from the irregular shapes and sad, would-be sweet smell that left an antiquated stench in the air that this room was anything but fresh and clean. The walls were cold, the rough-hewn floor splattered with puddles of tepid, off-white water that was less transparent than it should have been. Seto had seen worse, and yet, he had never seen anything quite like this. The lights painted the walls with the guise of purity, but there was clearly none to be found there. It seemed like a foul trick, a cheap attempt at deception that was disgusting in its ineffectuality.

His first instinct was to throw out his arms like a set of steel swords, somehow prevent Mokuba from entering a place that felt so insincere in its supposed sweetness. However, looking over his shoulder, he could see the only possible alternative. Beyond Mokuba's shoulder was an encompassing black abyss, a solid wall of dismal impermeability that would drag him down with its sharp, smoky claws should Seto turn his back for a moment. Out there, he wouldn't know where Mokuba was, he wouldn't be able to see, even feel him. And he couldn't let that happen. Inhaling deeply, as if he thought that would keep him from losing hold of himself, his long fingers roped around Mokuba's wrist and gently, remorsefully, led him inside. With each step, waves of nausea palpitated through him, fierce, dark teeth punctured his skin and malicious whispers wreathed around his head. In one icy, rigid move, he flung himself and Mokuba against the back wall as if plunging into freezing water, all the while feeling his skin slowly slip apart and abandon him.

Mokuba looked up at him inquisitively, gently cocking his head to the side as the vicious torrents of lights threw unearthly shadows on his features. "I'm sorry, Mokuba," Seto whispered, his voice pounding out in short, bristled breaths. "I'm sorry, but we have to do this." Mokuba softly shook his head, eyes lowering as he retreated into thoughtful consideration of the situation before them.

"Sorry for what, Seto?" Mokuba whispered to the tile floor, his voice fragile and wispy.

"Just for—never mind. Here." He removed Mokuba's sodden overcoat, a patchwork, overused cloak that had belonged to an indeterminate number of children before him. He spread the coat out over the radiator like he might a burial shroud over its occupant and poked and twisted at the gears until a faint and throbbing rickety sound emanated from the machine. The radiator filled the small room with the stench of bitter, caustic burning that tasted like foreign poison on his tongue. Underneath it all there always seemed to be floating, just beyond his ability to define it, the eerie humming of another, distant world. It was as if there was some invisible force in play all around them, pulling on them with delicate, transparent strings as if they were lifeless dangling puppets whose only purpose was to serve and entertain their master.

Mokuba shivered violently, seizing at his arms in an effort to retain the little warmth that might not have abandoned him. The two had an unspoken understanding that they were to remain as silent as possible, afraid that the true meaning of their words would escape them if communicated verbally, become mutated and vague. The lights all around seemed to glower like the eyes strangers, waiting for the instant one of them might make a false move so as to use it was a justification against them. Mokuba's eyes darted uneasily from one to another, waiting to see which one would spring at him first. Turning cautiously to Seto, as if he thought it would be admitting a sign of weakness to a formidable enemy, he gently asked, "Aren't you going to dry yours too?"

"No, I'm fine." Seto smiled weakly, trying to warm Mokuba with his gentle expression in a way that the radiator could not. "Come over here," he gestured towards the radiator though didn't touch it, "you need to warm up." They stood awkwardly for a few moments, occasionally repressing shivers as the watery, tepid, dirty-smelling air that felt like it had already been used by too many people washed over them, painting their skin the same musty, tired color sour shadows. Seto watched in silence as large, crystalline spheres accumulated at the ends of Mokuba's hair and collided with the floor, dully counting off the time like an immense grandfather clock in a large, empty room.

All the while, the radiator wheezed and rattled, its pitiful wisps of heat palling in comparison to the immense, deep-drenched enormity of Seto and Mokuba's countenance. Seto was vaguely aware that Mokuba was faring worse than he was. He skin was ghostly pale and papery, eyes bulging and faintly purple lips trembling. A small part of him, like a long-forgotten memory that was trying to make itself present again, felt that he should reach out his hand to touch him, to wipe the cold away that seemed so close to engulfing him, always lurking around his shoulders like dozens of silky black and semi-transparent crows. He could see the reflections of their wings in Mokuba's large, glassy eyes as they trembled with hope, uncertainty, and the eventual disappointment that always consumed them both after the most recent party of prospective parents had made their way past.

Seto starred down at his hand. Small, bony, and pale, he watched as it clenched and opened, seemingly on its own volition. Already the windy, tumultuous afternoon spent in the car seemed lifetimes away. He studied the curves of his fingers, how they mutated and became unrecognizable with his hand's shifting shape. He wanted to do something with it, to hold onto something or reach towards something better. He gently extended his fingers as if he hoped the miraculous object would materialize there, providing him with the key to unlock all the mysteries bubbling around them.

A sudden, shattering thud at the door snapped through the near silence, splintering the scene like a paper-thin sheet of glass. Mrs. Cole appeared in the doorway, her dreary silhouette a dramatic juxtaposition against the stark whitewashed walls. Her lines were heavy, loose, and excessive, another harsh contrast between the utilitarian and shamelessly unaesthetic bathroom. She came baring several deflated piles of threadbare pajamas that were an off-white, diseased looking color that couldn't decide what it wanted to be. She set the clothes down on a dry patch of countertop, and turning to them with a slightly misplaced and insincere sense of authority, as if she wouldn't have followed her own directions if she had been on the receiving end of them, examined them carefully. "Here you two go," she gestured towards her offerings, "you best put these on so you don't catch cold. Once you're all changed you can have something to eat and I can show you where you'll be sleeping." She smiled weakly and, Seto couldn't fail to notice, let her eyes dart around the perimeter of the room as her breath caught, seeming to be searching for something that she couldn't define but was always expecting to suddenly appear.

"There's no way I'm wearing these," Seto grumbled as he scrutinized the clothing after Mrs. Cole had left. "They're practically transparent." Indeed, as he held the threadbare garments against the piercing volley of lights, they appeared to be composed more of the gaps between stitches than actual fabric. Even just holding it, Seto felt like he was somehow doing it harm, as if simply breathing on it too strongly would cause the entire contraption to disintegrate in his hands and crumple to the floor like finely ground sand.

"But Seto, won't we be cold?" Seto cautiously set down the shirt he had been scrutinizing and turned his eye instead to Mokuba, who was shaking so viciously that his face was nearly blurred beyond recognition, replaced with static and pierced with ambiguity.

"Trust me, Mokuba, these won't help." He roughly nudged the clothes, only to see them dissolve into the milky puddles of water accumulating on the countertop. Stealing a fleeting glance around the room, which seemed to tear itself open before his eyes like a ferocious jaw about to devour him, Seto seized at the stiff, heavy doorknob and ripped the door open, revealing the same black mountainous abyss that they had just barely escaped such a short time ago. "Come on, Mokuba, let's get going." Mokuba cautiously teetered towards the doorway, uneasily—as if the darkness produced a pounding wind that he couldn't overcome on his own. With hands tightly curled into sharp fists, he followed Seto out of the room, not daring to look back as he heard the door shut with a caustic, scraping thud behind them.

* * *

AN: This was a story that I began a few months back, but due to the general suckiness of the first edition, am now revising. Because I'm always looking for tips on how to improve (much like poor Seto here xD) I appreciate any comment that you have to throw at me!


	2. Dreaming Someone Else's Dream

As much as he despised to admit it, even to the smallest and most interior corners of himself, Seto had always hated the darkness. It was too saturated in ambiguity, too dense with questions and uncertainty. He was drawn to straight paths and pure figures, darkness only reminded him of how much of his life was an endless maze, how easy it could be to follow a false instinct and chase a dead dream for his entire life without knowing that it would lead to a sad, fatal end.

In this orphanage, darkness took on a new and morbid meaning. The lights dangled helplessly like dead bodies from the cafeteria ceiling. The room seemed swallowed in it. Shadows feasted on any feeble glow, forced it into submission. It was a battle that the children had already lost. Studying their faces, Seto could see that there was no radiance in their eyes, no flesh to their skin. The shadows pooled at the corners of their faces, lurked in the lines on their lips, and flourished in their pupils like a deadly virus. Darkness crept out of their faces like vines and encircled everything in their vicinity, wrapped it a chocking grip and squeezed the sunshine out of it.

"Children," Miss Cole cooed in her downtrodden, dusty voice, "these two boys are Seto and Mokuba, they're going to be eating with you tonight." She gently pulled out two twiggy, rough-looking chairs from under the battered table and trailed her arm across them, indicating that this was where they should sit. Mokuba instinctively stiffened at the thought of having to join these sad shells of children, but Seto softly nudged him into his seat.

The two felt as though they were pinned under the sour glow of a spotlight. The feeble, musty presence of these ghostly creatures was suffocating, they seemed to pull all of the happiness and sparkle out of the air, but were clearly incapable of retaining it. Their faces were flat and despondent, their movements sluggish and timid, as if they expected the world to dissolve into a foggy memory before they had finished eating. The most disturbing part, Seto thought, was that they seemed so weak and so simple that he doubted they would notice if it did, never mind care.

Seto analyzed the food placed before them by a time-worn and fear-stained assistant. Like Miss Cole, her eyes refused to touch them fully, she seemed to be trying to convince herself that they weren't really there. Seto softly spun a slimy spoon through a pale, grimy bowl of what he assumed was supposed to be soup, but looked more like something that had been scraped off the bottom of a heavily polluted pond. He remembered the stories he had told Mokuba—Hansel and Gretel, Hades and Persephone—it always seemed like eating the food of a foreign and dangerous world was somehow admitting defeat. It was brining the place inside you, acknowledging that you had a made a home there. Seto bit his lip and vowed to ignore his hunger.

Time sputtered awkwardly across the floor and dripped down the walls as their dinner hour drifted on. A few times Seto made a half-hearted attempt at conversation, but each time he opened his mouth to speak his voice floundered and withered away to a wisp of smoke. Mokuba had followed his brother's lead and was not eating, but he tightly clutched himself around the waist, slowly being whittled away by his insatiable hunger. Seto wished that he had something to give him, but his pockets were full of nothing but dust and empty promises. Shadows began to battle starlight, and after an eternity of cavernous silence, Miss Cole led them to their bedroom.

The room was large and withering. Everything from the floor to the furniture—to the occupants themselves—seemed to be hovering on the brink of falling apart. Seto feared that his bed would not be able to withstand the force of his gaze, let alone his weight.

"Seto, dear," she gestured to a sagging, greasy bed in the farthest, darkest corner of the bedroom, "this is where you'll be sleeping. And Mokuba, your bed is over there." She directed Mokuba towards a similarly decrepit bed at least a half dozen spaces away. "I'm sorry that they're not together," she sighed, "but these were the only spots available, and people can be very averse to change." Mokuba's eyes searched Seto out, delicately but desperately pleading for Seto to throw a fit, cause a scene, do whatever it took to make everything alright and guarantee that they would never be divided. Initially, that was exactly Seto's intention, but as he prepared to raise his voice and demand—as civilly as possible—some improvement in their accommodations, his eyes locked with Miss Cole's, and saw that she was begging with every fiber of her being for him to do exactly the opposite. Her weariness, her sadness, stunned him to into silence.

"We have a very strict curfew here," she explained. "No one is to be out of their bed after eight thirty except for emergencies. No loud noises. No lights. We'll have breakfast tomorrow at eight, and I'll give you the rest of the rules then. And a tour, if you'd like." She smiled sweetly at them, but her warm emotions felt shallow, forced, and uncomfortable. Seto thought that he caught something odd in her eyes—fear. But what reason would she have to fear them? They were only children. With a final fleeting glance, she left them floating on the expanse of the calloused wood floor to check on their roommates.

Mokuba watched her retreating figure before furtively approaching Seto like a half-snared animal. His eyes were wide and beseeching, his bottom lip was trembling. "Seto," he whispered, "you can't let her do that. I'll never be able to sleep in this place with you so far away!"

Seto shook his head solemnly. "I'm sorry, Mokie," he muttered, "but I think we'll have to do this for a little while. This whole place makes me uneasy, but for now I think it's best to play by their rules—when we can." When Mokuba didn't seem to find this a satisfactory response, Seto gave him a feathery smile. "Don't worry, Mokuba, I'll be right here the whole time. This will only be a temporary situation, I promise."

Mokuba twisted his mouth in displeasure. It was his personal belief that his big brother could cradle the world in his hands, and his words became law. To see him acquiesce so easily to a rule that to him was obviously arbitrary seemed impossible, unacceptable.

"You don't need to be afraid, Mokie." Seto whispered. "Everything will be alright. I promise." He gently grasped Mokuba's hands, savoring the feeling of their vibrant warmth against his icy skin. He could feel Mokuba's heart fluttering in his fingers, and for a moment he was certain that they held the sun between them.

Their fellow orphans moved stoically, without speaking or seeing, hardly breathing. It seemed as if the room itself was clenched tightly around them, squeezing the life out of them and daring them to make a false move. Their eyes were hallow, their gestures empty of emotion or meaning. They were living merely to exist, tirelessly and thoughtlessly running through the riddles in their minds, forcing themselves into the next day. They were exhausted by living, drained by the fear that lurked over their shoulders and slithered down their backs, never ceasing to fill their dreams with images of loneliness and eternal, tangible melancholy. As Seto crawled under his flimsy, oily blankets, he was certain that this was the worst possible place that fate ever could have abandoned them.

Sleep seemed elusive. There was a storm raging in Seto's mind, tossing him senselessly through his sea of blankets until his thoughts were beaten out of him. Icy waves of sleeplessness broke across his shoulders, slashing at his skin and threatening to drag him down to the salty, vicious nightmares that lurked below. Every breath was jerked out with a shudder and a shiver. The wild incisors of ocean waves sliced through him, leaving him weak and mangled, clinging to life on an abandoned coastline because he had nothing else to believe in.

The rain had begun again. It roared like a drum against the moldy ceiling, occasionally tearing through the crumbling roofing and colliding with the floor. Large pools of rainwater glowed like unearthly eyes on the floor, sinking into the darkness but always there, always alive to his restless and unsettled presence. The wind howled against the walls but seemed determined to flee once it realized where it was. Even the elements could not stay. A small, dangerous part of Seto prayed that the wind would tear the building apart like the jaws of a wild animal, or topple into the raging, thrashing sea. He hoped that the night would incinerate them in all in its finely sharpened claws. He longed for something to sweep him away.

Mokuba felt like he was years away, in a distant time and place that had long been forgotten by history books. His eyes were peeled by the darkness. He clung to his pillow viciously. It was a wretched thing that smelt like stranger's hair and stabbing nightmares, but it was the only thing that he had to cling to amid the furious tumult of silence and shadow. He could make out Seto's silhouette, gently illuminated by a single, fragile beam of moonlight. His face looked pale and stricken in this light, and it looked to Mokuba that he was holding his breath to keep from screaming.

The floor rocked and swayed beneath his bed, a void opened into the floor, and before Mokuba knew what had happened or what to do, the moonlight was gone and Seto was enshrouded in a terrible fog of gloom.

Seto was certain that he was not asleep, but fantasy lurked in the corners of his mind, maliciously convincing him to disregard everything that he had believed was true and surrender to the bittersweet poison of the unexplainable. The world was caving in around him, pressing into his skin like hundreds of tiny needles. Memories of the future swirled around him, pulled at his hair and prodded at his body, as if conducting a careful experiment to see how long his sanity would survive. Tiny convulsions shot through him like sparks of electricity, making every inch of him feel precarious and roughly disjointed. He could not see Mokuba, and it bothered him.

He could not remember a time that they had been so far apart. He could not remember ever feeling so alone. Helplessness did not sit well with him.

Thick, billowing clouds beat against the sky. Waves snarled and bit the shoreline, and Seto was slowly carried into sleep, despite his best intentions. He was not awoken by noise, but rather by an eerie, oppressive silence that gave sound no space to breathe. He shot upright in bed, heart pounding out through his eye sockets and breath stained black by the sudden tension that stung the air. His skin was damp and trembling. He could sense more innately than he knew the difference between night and day that something dangerous was around him, encircling him and determined to not let him escape.

He heard a voice coming from the bed beside him. It trembled like glass and shattered just as easily. Seto could feel the fear so strongly in it that it burned him like acid, eating away at his unprotected skin.

"Please…not me…not tonight…"

There was a low, silky chuckle that seemed to come from all around him. "Henry, Henry, don't tell me that you're frightened of me? Honestly, I would have expected so much better from you…"

"Go—go away!...Please!"

"Oh Henry, don't you want to play?"

Seto could have swallowed his tongue at the primal, stifled cry that emitted from the next bed. It reminded him of the time that he and Mokuba had seen a cat methodically exterminating the mice that had lurked in the basement of one of their old orphanages. Mokuba had hated the very idea of it, had wanted to save the mice from their cruel and senseless fate. Seto, by contrast, had earnestly watched the scene play out with a convoluted combination of repulsion and fascination, not wanting to watch but unable to tear his eyes away. He had explained to Mokuba that it was part of the natural world, for the strong to kill the weak. It kept the world in balance. It was necessary.

"Lea—leave me al-lone! If my mum hears about this—"

Another stab of laughter. "Your mum, your mum, do you honestly believe that she'll return here, Henry. Return to _you_? There's no one here to come rescue you, Henry. There's no one who cares about how frightened you are."

"But my mum said she would come back!"

"And you believed her." There was a cool, condescending tone in the stranger's voice that slithered through the air, entrapping everything around it in its heavy, slimy wreath. "Your mother has forgotten you. You ought to do her the same honor."

"Never! She'll come back for me, I know it."

There was a long, unfortunate pause. "Oh, Henry, Henry, Henry, why can't you see what's directly in front of you? Your mummy is _dead_, or at least, you are dead to her. Forget her, Henry. There was never a space for you in her life, and there never will be. Why else would she have left you _here_? Here, among the living dead?"

Seto strained to block the words out, but they sank into him and turned his insides black and foul. This child's voice was harsher than the storm that had previously engulfed them. It had a kind of bitter stoniness and certainty that can only be borne from years of isolation and discontent. There was a hunger in it, a hunger for the spirits of strangers that would and could never be satisfied.

"Come on now, Henry. All I want to do is play a game. _One little game_. What could possibly be so painful in that?"

"I hate your games!"

"Only because you don't understand them…you can't see the beauty in my games, Henry, and that is your most miserable failing. But my creations are wonderful, if you could only _appreciate_ them…"

Seto shut his eyes. He was determined not to see, not to hear. He willed his existence out of this moment, and sold himself to the darkness of his nightmares.

He dreamed that he had fallen into a pit, a writhing pit of eyes and voices that refused to relinquish him. They wrapped themselves around his limbs—heavy, dark, and oppressive. They slithered through his hair and between his fingers, delicate tongues flickering in and out like the lifeless shadows of yellow flames. Their fangs gleamed like haughty pride; their movements were heavily physical and sickeningly slow. There was one that attached itself strongly to his hand and refused to release him. It encircled his wrist tight enough to break it, and the more he struggled the stronger its grip became. It mocked him, laughed at his pitiful attempts to escape, and pulled him inch by inch into a seeping abyss of blackness and death.

"Seto, Seto, Seto," it cooed like a helpless child. He was drowning in its voice.

"Seto, Seto, wake up!" It was Mokuba. His voice seemed to come from far away, from a place that existed more in memory than any physical reality that he could think of. Looking down at him through his sleep-blurred eyes, Seto thought that Mokuba looked incredibly small and vulnerable, as if a stiff, icy wind could easily have swept him away.

"What is it, Mokuba?" Seto asked heavily. For a moment he couldn't remember where he was, he seemed to be floating in a quiet, empty void independent of time, space, and identity. Even his own voice sounded unfamiliar, as if distantly uttered by a stranger who looked remarkably like him. Seeing the barely suppressed anxiety that splashed and floundered in Mokuba's eyes slowly pulled him back to the present with a sinking thud and stirring, definitive click as the world slid back into focus and streams of memory poured in through the windows.

"Is something wrong?"

Mokuba's shoulders shivered and he studied Seto's face with concentrated desperation, his every gesture conveying a senseless helplessness that his words refused to confess. Mokuba, like his brother, was stubborn in this regard.

"I just couldn't sleep…so I thought I would check on you to see if you were okay…"

Seto laughed softly. "I'm fine, Mokie," he whispered. "C'mere." He gently patted the ratty fragments of the other side of his bed. "My bed is cold." Mokuba beamed in the milky moonlight and immediately jumped into the bed beside him, submerging his face in the leafy layers of rough brown blankets.

The two lay in silence for a few moments, watching the ceiling and waiting for the sun to save them. When Mokuba couldn't sleep, Seto would always tell him the story of the man who lived in the sun. He was trapped there, in his giant golden ball in the sky, and he loved to look down on all the children and watch them play. But it made him sad, Seto said, because he had been put in the sun when he was little kid himself, hardly older than the two of them were now, and he had never gotten to play with all his friends like the other children his age. But he knew he had important work to do, so he watched as his friends played and grew up. Seto said that he had been sad for a little while, but he cheered himself up by watching all the children of the world have fun, by giving them safety—for the ones who were afraid of the dark—and a time to play outside for the ones who weren't. He ran through the sky and he was always happy because he knew that he gave them something that no one else could, even if he couldn't participate in their fun himself.

So, when it was dark, when it seemed like the night was never ending and sunlight would never pierce the thick curtains of midnight shadow, Mokuba pictured the boy in the sun, always running through the sky to try and find him, and he knew that morning would always come. These warm, billowing thoughts were about to carry Mokuba off to his dreams until Seto's voice at his side gently called him back.

"Mokuba, did you hear anything earlier…like, talking or something?"

Mokuba shook his head. "I don't think so, Seto. I just heard the rain. It was really loud, wasn't it? Why, were people saying something?"

"No…I guess not. Never mind then, I must have been dreaming or something." Seto watched for a moment as his voice swirled above them like smoke, then gently nudged Mokuba's shoulder. "Hey, listen Mokie," he murmured, "just because we're here, just because we've been all sorts of bad places, it doesn't mean that our parents didn't love us, you understand? They never would have wanted this for us, you know? Dad really loved you a lot, and I know that Mom would have too, if she could have. Okay?"

Seto's words were largely lost on Mokuba, who heard them through a thick warm haze of drowsiness. But the comforting, rhythmic pattern of Seto's voice had a reassuring quality, and he nodded in agreement. "Yeah, Seto. Okay…"

The cold, brittle silence slowly dissipated under the lull of Mokuba's heavy breathing. For the second time that day, Seto studied his peaceful face, wondering what the landscape of Mokuba's dreams looked like, and just how far from reality they took him. If he was anything like his brother, then it was very far, indeed.

Reaching inside his shirt—he had refused to take it off, even in bed, lest too much of this world touch him—Seto delicately unfolded a worn scrap of paper that he insured was never parted from him. It was a drawing that Mokuba had done several years previously, in an orphanage that had been beaten and smudged by time into a distorted orange glow in the back of Seto's mind. Running his finger over it, Seto could still feel the waxy, heavy crayon that Mokuba had used to make it. The lines were thick and sloppy, but the overall effect never failed to stir him.

It was his favorite creature. As shiny as moonbeams, silky, and sharp as a bolt of lightning, the Blue Eyes White Dragon was the epitome of his distant, intangible fantasies. The way Mokuba had rendered it, while not technically perfect, had captured the emotional intensity in a way that clung to him and refused to let go. It's eyes bright and fiery, tail thrashing, and mouth flung wide, this was clearly a creature that was never pushed, never bullied, had never known loss or tasted fear. It was the roar of the wind that Seto hoped would tear the orphanage down—all the orphanages down. It's roar was the metallic ring of independence—of freedom from the cruel, dividing eyes of his would be future parents. Its wings were as wide as the Earth, and they were strong enough to carry him away from everything that he longed to forget, from all that he had ever known or distrusted.

Shards of moonlight danced across the image as Seto rotated it in his hands, smiling lightly to himself. Without even trying, Mokuba had perfectly captured everything Seto wanted to become, down to the smallest fine, pearly scale and most scathing point of the steely-sharp claw. The moonlight, Seto noticed, made the drawing come alive in a way that he had never seen before. It seemed to dart across the page, flapping its majestic wings and wiping away everything surrounding it with its searing roar. Without thinking, Seto tried to reach into the page, to snatch the dragon out and grasp it tightly between his fingers. But each time he tried, the creature evaded his touch and retreated deeper into the page, daring him to reach further.

And thus, Seto cautiously dipped his hand in and out of the paper, determined to touch the dragon of his dreams but eternally unable to reach it. He remained oblivious to two yellow, narrowed slits of eyes that cut through the darkness, watching him the entire time.

The wind and the waves chipped away at the shore, and the darkness was slowly stripped away. The magic little boy who had never grown up raced through the sky in his golden celestial globe, determined to scare the nighttime away. Thin gray beams of morning shattered the night. Morning came bitter and unusual.

* * *

Comments? Questions? Criticism? I'm open to anything you guys have to throw at me, so keep it coming!


	3. Compromise, That's Nothing New to You

Silver shards of sunlight filtered through the damp early morning air, washing the room in a bleak and bitter clarity that made Seto's eyes sting as he pulled them open. He couldn't remember where he was or how he had gotten there; the entire previous day seemed obliterated from his memory. The only thing he could clearly identify was the sense that the world was warped, unapproachable, and unfamiliar.

Floating, bobbing listlessly on a wide, grey ocean, detached and softly shattered; it was finally Mokuba who reeled him back into reality. His brother's sweet, wispy breath rolled thick and heavy, like warm billows of cream, slowly filling in the gaping holes that were the mark of Seto's fragility.

Limbs heavy and despondent, flesh fallow and footsteps taciturn and morbid, Seto and Mokuba slowly slid into the procession of children as they made their way to the dining hall for breakfast. All eyes were absorbed into the floor, all voices were chained, beaten, bruised, and silent. The only thing that seemed alive around them were the walls, always seeming to sway and hum with some kind of omniscient smugness that was just barely suppressed behind the moldy wainscoting and creaking floorboards.

As he walked, Seto had to blink deeply and make his footsteps slow and steady. Despite everything his senses told him, a deeper and more primitive sense seemed to speak up from somewhere dark and frightening within him telling him that this was not the reality that he was used to. The air seemed heavy, and when he tried to breathe he felt like he might as well have been underwater. Everything seemed foggy and fluid, and the harder he tried to struggle against the sinking feeling the more it drew it him, chaining him in the tight steely grasp of fantasy.

The process of eating felt even more strange and unfamiliar to them. The food seemed to always be in motion, floating, sinking, or spinning about their plates and bowls as if they were all in suspended gravity. And just as they had been in the bedroom at night, just as they had all woken up that morning, the other children were deadly silent, as if the breath had been compressed out of their lungs through their skin.

Seto and Mokuba sat close together, all the while shooting stealthy glances at the children around them at the table. In the daylight they were even more frightening than they had appeared before. Their skin was fallow and heavily veined; their eyes seemed close to dropping out of their skulls and rolling across the table. Everyone kept their faces down and movements as delicate and languid as possible, as if afraid of disturbing the very air that festered all around them. And suddenly Seto recognized what it was that was responsible for the sweaty smell that crawled across the bedroom walls, the constant feeling of being compressed into a box that was too small, the itching feeling in the back of his eyes: it was fear.

Seto was familiar with fear, both the giving and the receiving end. He had learned that fear produces a unique smell—it sets off a primal trigger in all those who inflict or witness it, a trigger that supersedes the power of vocabulary and strikes directly at the nerves like a poisoned dart. And these children emitted it, all of them. Seto could feel his heart beat faster and climb up through his neck as the realization continued to seep in. There was something foul and horrible going on here and there could be no doubt that he and Mokuba were now in danger.

Seto's first instinct was to turn to him, to yell, push, run, and tumble until the two of them were out the door. Even the wild, unknown country with its faceless rolling hills and fierce jaws of ocean current seemed safer and more comforting than this oppressive and phantasmagorical world swirling around and threatening to swallow them.

However, the instant Seto made up his mind to take them away, his body suddenly felt rigid, as if he had been turned into stone. His voice suffocated, movements suppressed, Seto could only sit in horror as his tumultuous and troubled feelings struggled to find an outlet.

Eyes watering, forehead burning and sweating, he longed to tear off his own skin. The feeling of being trapped in his own body was horrifying. His vision seemed to swim as the world around him went in and out of focus and seemed to lose all its shape, form, and texture. He was drowning, choking, fruitlessly struggling against the steely fist that had suddenly sprouted and entwined itself around him.

That was when Ms. Cole came up behind them. The gentle pressure of her hand on his shoulder and her gray, anemic whisper of a voice dissipated the fog and terror that had gripped Seto just a moment before, abruptly returning him to his crystal-clear, continuous world.

"I hope you boys slept well your first night here." Her voice, her mannerisms, were like a thin wisp of cloud in the rising summer sun—mere instants from being cut down completely. Mokuba looked up to Seto, confusion lightly etched in his downy youthful features. He was expecting Seto to reply, for his big brother to build castles out of words that would keep away prodding words, cruel whispers, and prying eyes. But there was nothing.

Seto could feel the nerves in his face sizzle. Something, somewhere, was biting down on him, caging his mind, his voice, every fiber in his body. Everything that had once been in his power and under his careful control was suddenly turned against him and was draining the life out of him as if a hole had been poked in his soul. He shuddered violently like a tree being thrashed by the icy jaws of a wild rainstorm, and he suddenly felt exhausted, as if he had gone centuries on foot and without a moment of sleep.

Both Mokuba and Ms. Cole became increasingly concerned as Seto's already pale face lost its composure and became contorted and damp. Mokuba grabbed frantically at Seto's hand, trying furiously to shake the life back into him, to set off a spark of movement. He jerked sharply, as if freeing himself from the descent into a prison of sleep, and suddenly his eyes were open, pulsating and vivid.

Seto sat up straight, as if being pulled by a chord that dangled from the ceiling, and replied in a fresh, clear, and crisp voice, "Yes, thank you." His face, which had been plied and twisted almost beyond recognition just a moment ago was suddenly as smooth and serene as the surface of a frozen pond, and Mokuba could sense immediately that neither the tone of his brother's behavior nor his words were truly his own. The words didn't feel like Seto's own—they were smooth and appeasing where they should have held their rigidity, they were sweet where they should have been bitter. There was a ghost inside him, breathing and speaking for him.

Ms. Cole, however, did not seem to notice that anything was amiss and continued. "That's very good to hear. We're very happy to have you here, and remember that if you ever need anything, feel free to ask." Mokuba nodded weakly, not daring to relinquish Seto's still clammy and shaking hand. "I hope that you've had a chance to meet some of the…other children." She paused for a moment to cast a furtive glance around the room. "If not, then you'll have plenty of opportunities today. You see, here we usually split the children into two groups. All the big kids—around your age—go up to the tower after breakfast, and all the little ones like him," she nodded in Mokuba's direction, "go the big playroom at the other end. When breakfast is over—"

Mokuba cried out in alarm as he felt Seto's grip tighten around his hand, now strong enough to bruise his bones. And as if a shade had been lifted off the sun, Seto's facial features rearranged themselves once again like pebbles migrating across the bottom of a river. The ghost was gone now.

"No." His voice was cold, stern, and heavy, throbbing to an undulating, stubborn beat that he knew only he and Mokuba could hear. And Mokuba—fears instantly assuaged—knew that his brother was back. Ms. Cole was taken aback, allowing Seto to continue.

"Allow me to explain to you precisely why that will not occur. My brother does not leave my supervision. No matter what the legal documents might say, I am his _guardian_ and I do not take that responsibility lightly. We will stay together, and for your safety I strongly recommend that you do not try to change that."

His words were so firm, so infused with an authority that was heavy and sharp enough to cut ice, that for a moment Ms. Cole's eyes widened in fear and apprehension, and she looked close to obeying him. Then she swallowed down her momentary panic and remembered the more pressing concern, the fear that went beyond her anxiety regarding his particular strong-willed boy and his little brother, the omnipresent fear that swallowed and shadowed them all.

"I'm sorry, dear, but that's just the way things go around here. We have to split you boys up, it's for…your own good really. For the good of everyone."

"I said no!" Seto stood suddenly, causing the table to rattle on its moldy legs and sending their dishes shattering to the floor. In an instant all eyes in the dining room were on them, and the weight of the collective attention was suffocating. Seto adopted his sternest, most intimidating and adult manner but his skin was thin and cracking under the pressure, allowing a scared, petulant child to poke through and speak for him.

"You will _not _split us up!" he stamped his foot resolutely, causing several years' worth of dust to take to the air, swarming around them like a fog of death and decay. Seto was aware that he had broken something very delicate, that he had stared in the eye some kind of shadow or demon that was usually only discussed in hushes and whispers.

"You can't tell us what to do! You can't split us up! You'll be sorry!" He continued shouting, not caring about the eyes all around that bore into them, Mokuba's shaking and tugging at his arm begging him to stop, nor about the figures that crept closer and closer to him, slowly wrapping their arms around him and bearing him away. He saw, heard, and felt nothing but indignation and fury until the world slowly lost depth, focus, and color, then faded away to nothing but echoing silences and swirling shades of gray.

He was gone now, and Mokuba was completely beyond his control.

Seto's rapid departure brought an abrupt and uncomfortable end to the breakfast hour, and the children were dully sorted out and directed their separate ways. Mokuba watched in confusion for a moment, his body trembling and eyes wide and fearful. He felt as small as a mouse and many times as vulnerable.

He quickly found himself swept away in the currents of other children, easily absorbed into a melee that he could neither control nor understand. The world without Seto was scarcely recognizable. It was wider, like a gaping open cavern yearning to cave in and crush him. Mokuba bit his lip and tried to swallow the anxiety and fear, but he couldn't dislodge the aching feeling that he was floating across a tumultuous ocean like a ship without a mast.

His anxieties were smoothed slightly when he entered the younger children's playroom—but only slightly. Whereas the rest of the orphanage ached with stale air that stunk of malevolent intentions, the atmosphere in the playroom seemed slightly lighter and less oppressive. There was a wide bank of windows that gazed out over rolling green hills and a few milky beams of soft, feathery sunlight. It was the first natural light that Mokuba had seen in days, and he gravitated towards it almost immediately.

Leaving the other children to their noisy, colorful, and half-broken toys, Mokuba wandered towards the windows and settled himself in a small patch of dusty sunlight on the floor. He placed his hand up to the dirtied glass and imagined for a moment that he could melt it with the power of his palm. His heart stung for Seto, who now felt like he was miles away, holed up in a cave or in a prison. Either way, he was completely inaccessible, and that meant that Mokuba was completely alone.

He bit his bottom lip and tried to imagine Seto standing next to him, putting his hand on his limp and ragged shoulders in an attempt to steady them. He imagined his stern but caring face, willing him to be strong and not to cry. It was difficult, but he managed to swallow down the tears and keep from drowning. He couldn't, however, keep from trembling.

At that moment, Mokuba was encased as if in a glass sphere. The contents of his mind—his worries and his fears—painted the walls of the playroom in an ink that was invisible to all of the children except one. Heart beating fast, breath sorrowful and eyes glazed over in mourning for the loss of his big brother, Mokuba had no idea that he looked exactly like a bird about to be caged.

"Do you want to see something magic?"

Mokuba nearly jumped at the voice that slipped up beside him, feeling almost as though it had reached up inside him and twisted him around. His shock, however, dissipated across his skin like a wave sailing over the surface of a lake, and he couldn't help feeling that Seto would be proud of his burgeoning ability to contain his emotional responses.

Mokuba turned around to face the newcomer, a small, twig-like boy with skin as pale as evaporation and sharp, clever eyes. Those eyes were different than the eyes of all the other children at the orphanage. There was no fear in them—on the contrary, they seemed to overflow with an intrepid hunger for life and adventure. Mokuba sized him up the same way that he had seen Seto do to countless other boys in the past, assessing him for any possible threats.

His eyes, unfortunately, were not as sharp and discerning as his brother's. Still being young, still being Seto's shadow, he saw everything through a pearly fog, and many small but important details were lost on him. The one thing that did stand out was the boy's smile—a smile like waves and ripples of unadulterated sunlight that spilled out of his mouth and puddled on the floor. He ate Mokuba with that smile.

"My name is Tom Riddle, what's yours?" the boy inquired. Mokuba didn't notice how far away the other children were, as if they were unwanted toys that had been confined to the corners.

"Mokuba."

"You came here last night. With your brother."

Mokuba nodded. It might as well have been a signal of submission.

"Where is he now?"

Here his words failed him. His name was a fact, something that followed him around and clung to him. But now Seto was shrouded in a cloak of fog, and Mokuba could do nothing in response but shake his head and bite back the fiery tears.

"They took him away, didn't they?" Tom's face was painted in purple shades of sympathy. "Adults do all sorts of terrible things like that. I don't trust any of them." His words pelted out of his mouth as if forced, as if he were trying to crush them as he spoke. "It might be for the best that he's not here, though. The big kids are scary. And dangerous. It's best to keep away from them as much as possible, or they might try to hurt you."

Mokuba shook his head resolutely. He couldn't deny the dangers of the older children in general, but an affront to Seto was more than he could bear. "Seto would never hurt me."

Tom waited for a moment, then drew closer and lowered his voice to a silky whisper. "You never know with these big kids, Mokuba. They act friendly when Ms. Cole is watching us, but the second she has her back turned they're all claws and fangs. And the ones that seem the nicest on the outside always have the most anger bottled up inside them, just waiting for a fuse to set it off on the people who can't fight back."

Mokuba could feel himself shaking, but he struggled to keep his words coming out smooth and level. "Seto would never do that to me. He's always protected me. You don't know him at all."

Tom raised an eyebrow, silently accepting the challenge. "But I think that I do. I know a lot about the both of you, actually. I know that you've been to five orphanages, and the last one was the worst one. They locked you in a closet and no one found you for three hours. When your brother tried to free you they almost locked him as well. And when the teacher finally found out she thought it was your fault and sent you both outside in the rain. At the place before that you used to hide in the basement—until you discovered the rats. Your favorite thing is your sketchbook, and your brother's favorite is his cards. You drew him a card—his favorite one, in fact. A giant blue and silver dragon. I know that you were born in Russia, but you don't remember anything but the colors. You think that your mother's death was your fault, and your brother things that his father's death was his—"

"Stop! Stop!" Mokuba had clapped his hands over his ears to stop the onslaught of the words, but they still found a way inside him. They crept up through his tear ducts, licked at the pores of his skin, slid down his throat. There was something about those words, all those secrets so bluntly laid bare, that made Mokuba feel small, shaken, and completely vulnerable. They were crueler than any taunts or threats he had ever heard. "How—how do you know all those things?" he barely managed to sputter the words out through his frantic and scrambling breathing. Eyes wide, he moved himself as far away from Tom as he could manage. "How..how?"

The words died in his throat and turned to smoke. "I know much, much more than just that." the boy's mouth twisted like thorns into something that was supposed to resemble a smirk. "I know everything there is to know about you and Seto, and I know that you can't count on him to protect you. Not here."

Mokuba felt an icy shiver race across his skin and sink its teeth into him. He felt frigid despite the sun.

"But I know good things, too." Tom continued. "I know all sorts of tricks and magic. Lots of the other kids are scared of me because of it, but you aren't scared of magic, are you?"

Mokuba was still rattling on the inside, but he shook his head.

"I didn't think so." The malice and sinister shadows that had been piercing through the boy a moment before seemed to have melted into soft quilts of friendship and comfort, and for a moment Mokuba pitied him. He must be lonely. "If you promise not to tell anyone, I can show you some of what I can do."

Mokuba's eyes widened and he felt his breath catch. But there was a small wall inside him, a wall that held on stubbornly and forced Mokuba from tittering over the edge. That wall was Seto. "What about my brother?" he asked, already have expecting the answer.

There was a wind inside him, a gentle and soothing summer breeze that was made of Tom's sweet and fluid words. The breeze lifted him up, bundled snuggly around him, absorbed him.

"You can't tell Seto." There was an electric spark in Tom's eyes, a spark that begged to be explored. And that bright ball of light, combined with the winds and the sunshine, made jumping over that wall the easiest thing in the world.

-break-

Seto awoke with a start at the opposite end of the orphanage. He felt like he had spent the last several hours struggling with death and had just barely managed to wrest his life back out of its cold, moldy hands. The stench of death still clung to him. The smell of fear.

"Wh—Where is Mokuba?" he called out, notes becoming sharper as his panic heightened. "Mokuba! Mokuba!"

He was standing, prepared to tear the orphanage apart when he caught sight of the other children—or young adults, like him—who were regarding him from across the room with cynical eyes and thin mouths.

Seto turned on them. "Where is he? Where is my brother? Take me to him—now!" His years of migration had given Seto a set of sharp edges, like razors, and while he chose to maintain a benign presence when it meant safety, there were times when he preferred to let his metallic and iron sides out as well. He was about to begin clawing at them when one of the boys spoke up.

"You don't want to go where he is—trust me." The other children nodded earnestly.

"What? Why? What have they done to them?" the words came out in a whirlwind with so much force that they left Seto gasping.

"They haven't done anything to him," the boy continued. "He's just playing with the other younger kids."

"Then why can't I go to him?" Seto questioned, eyes thin and voice terse. An uncomfortable silence settled over the group, and they shifted it around awkwardly for several moments until someone was finally brave enough to break it.

"You don't want to go in there." It was a girl this time, hair and skin both the color of the floor. The rest of the words came out in short spasms, almost more from the cracks in the walls and floorboards than the children themselves.

"There's this awful kid there—"

"Evil kid—"

"—dangerous—"

"—he stole all my books and toys—"

"—doesn't let us sleep—"

"—tells us horrible things about our families—"

"And we finally decided a couple of days ago that we should do something about it." This was the first boy who was speaking again, and Seto could tell by the dangerously low tones of his voice that he was worth listening to.

"What are you talking about…" Seto took a few cautious steps closer, never letting his rigidity falter.

"We're going to do something about it. We're tired of being so afraid all the time—of letting him control us. We've been forming a plan to get rid of him once and for all, but it's difficult planning because we know that he can hear us whenever he likes. It's like he's always there, watching us."

Another silence descended, but this silence was thicker and darker.

"So we've been planning in secret—or, as secretly as we can. We think that we'll have our opportunity tomorrow, when they take us to the picnic at the coast." The gang of half-children exchanged a collective acidic smile. "We'll finally get rid of him."

"You—you want to kill him?" Seto was not often inclined to stutter, but he was genuinely shocked. Of all the horrors he had seen at his previous orphanages, murder had never been one of the activities on the schedule. He had faced astounding degrees of cruelty, but an unspoken wire had always held back the harshest of the bullies, the most insensitive and oblivious of the teachers. It was the reverberating wire of moral truth that taking the life of another was wrong, repulsive even. Seto was sure that that wire had saved he and Mokuba several times, and he had no desire to cross it.

Sensing Seto's indignation, the other children gathered closer around, pressing him with their eyes. They seemed to speak with one voice.

"You don't understand what it's like. You haven't lived here long enough. You don't know what he's capable of putting you through. It's worse than torture—worse than death. "

"Killing that kid will be doing the world a favor. And you leave your brother alone with him for more than he a few hours then he's as good as dead as well." It was that boy again. He flung his arm over Seto's shoulders and whispered harshly in his ear. "You will help us, or we'll think you're on his side." The words scraped at Seto's eardrums like gravel, but the more he tried to writhe away the tighter the grip around him became. "And you will not tell _anyone_ about his, understand?"

Seto's mind flickered to Mokuba. Mokuba—alone and helpless, perhaps in the grasp of a deranged child sociopath. He felt his heart tighten at the prospect of keeping secrets from him a letting him wander blindly into danger, and for a moment he considered fighting. He was here to keep Mokuba safe, after all, not get involved in murder schemes. But then his mind flickered back to something much more immediate, the hand on his back that he was sure was drawing blood, and leers of the children around him, glowering like so many starved vultures.

Seto took a breath, deep and blue and icy, and spit out the words, "Fine, I'll help you."

-break-

The dinner that evening was soaked in secrets. Seto, still breathing uneasily and teeth on edge, sat rigidly across from Mokuba at the same little table and refused to take his eyes off him. There was something odd in Mokuba's face, his demeanor. It was like there was something bubbling below the surface, just yearning to break free and gulp down the daylight.

"How was your first day, Mokie?" Seto tried to coat his voice with sympathy, but there was still something overly formal about it. He was too shaken, too afraid of letting his secrets spill out, to speak openly or completely.

Mokuba responded between mouthfuls. "It…wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." His smile was diluted, and there were holes in his words just as there were holes in Seto's.

"What did you do?"

"…Played with the toys, mostly. They have some nice games."

"Good." Seto studied his brother carefully, and had to fight down a wave of nausea when he realized something important: his brother had never been anything but completely honest with him in the past, but something was different now. Words and ideas were hiding behind shifting walls, and try as he might, Seto couldn't peer past them.

Mokuba was lying to him. And he was lying back.

-break-

I'm sorry that it took a ridiculously long time for this chapter to come out. The problem was, while I knew from the moment I started exactly how I want this story to end, and I hadn't really thought of a good middle.

Also, Mokuba was being bewitched by Tom when he agrees to keep the magic a secret from Seto.


End file.
